The Symantec Connect Blog has details on Symantec's discovery of the credentials of 44 million stolen online gaming accounts, saying that the accounts were being validated by an automated program to determine which of these could be sold. They say: "This particular database server we uncovered seems very much to be the heart of the operation—part of a distributed password checker aimed at Chinese gaming websites." They say there are credentials for at least 18 gaming websites in the database, an inventory including about 210,000 World of Warcraft accounts, 60,000 Aion accounts, 2 million PlayNC accounts, and 16 million Wayi Entertainment accounts. Regardless of whether Chinese sites were the target, they conclude with this advice: "As always, Symantec recommends that you keep your definitions up to date in order to ensure protection against new threats. As an added precaution, if you are in possession of a gaming account from one of the websites listed above, an update of your password would not go amiss." Thanks Network World.

Stanly Manly wrote on May 27, 2010, 11:38:In other news, the sky is falling, so make sure to buy my sky shielding umbrellas! I guess sales must be lagging, and scare tactics are the name of the game these days.

It looks to me like they are giving out information they discovered, and suggesting people keep their definitions up to date. Where are they trying to sell a product?